NEW FEATHERS ANTHOLOGY
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Photo by Marianna Smiley
Introducing the Wounded 
Kristy Nielsen


We line the hallways, heads between our knees 
like children in tornado drills. Or else we pivot 
the piano, center of the room, to sing the songs 
of glue and fumble through the dance of broken
pieces. Head held low and pelvis scooped
voices chipped from glaciers of rejection.
 
Orphaned, damaged, illegitimate, we take support 
in wooden shoulders of open doors, find comfort
in the balm of blink and exhale. Any piece 
of privacy provides the serum for its poison ambush 
if we knew to look. Every stutter in the heartbeat 
a rebuke against the need to scab, refusal 
to evolve the truer person underneath.
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